The boys laughed and egged him on to tell.
Tyler wagged his finger. “Matt, do you know the answer?”
Matt’s smile melted as the energy suddenly shifted. The boys now looked at him as if they were a pack and he was prey. “I hear your mother could fuck like nobody’s business.”
The other boys’ laughter rang around Matt.
“I wonder if your mama moaned like Amy did when I was grinding into her.”
Matt’s fingers tightened around the stick. “Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Why? You said yourself she’s an uptight pain in the ass,” Doug said.
Matt would never say for sure exactly what happened next. But when Benny punched him in the arm, he snapped. He and his mother practiced self-defense moves, and she always said to come out swinging. Make the first shot count. No such thing as a fair fight in the streets. He cracked the stick against Benny’s head. Adrenaline surged through his body. The other boys stared in stunned silence before they raced toward him. They were bigger. But he was faster. And it turned out, a whole lot meaner.
Nevada picked up Macy fifteen minutes later, and the moment she climbed into his vehicle, he was glad he’d bought strong coffee for her. She looked like she’d slept some but oddly looked less rested than she had when she’d left the sheriff’s office.
The scent of the coffee pulled her gaze to the cup holder. “For me?” she asked.
“Three sugars and two creams.”
She tore back the cup’s tab and sipped. “Bless you.”
As they pulled out onto the road that led to town, he asked, “You look like you’ve caught some sleep?”
“If you can call it that.”
“The leg?”
“For once the leg feels pretty good.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s all good.”
“The Macy I used to know could sleep through anything.”
She sipped more coffee. “The new Macy has dreams.”
“What kind of dreams?” He kept his tone low and nonjudgmental.
Instantly, she seemed to regret the confession, as if deciding nothing good came from being too forthcoming. “The kind of dreams I get when I’ve had too much coffee. Weird, odd, and in the light of day, they mean nothing.”
“Coffee never bothered you before.”
“Sadly, it does now. Getting tagged by a three-thousand-pound pickup changes a lot of things.”
“The limp will improve and the hair will grow back. What else has changed?”
“I now have a weird fascination for country western music.”
“I’m serious, Macy.”
“So am I. I found myself tapping my foot to banjo music the other day. Frightening.”
Nevada said nothing, but he could almost hear the wheels grinding in her head. Instead of telling him what was really on her mind, she shifted the conversation back to the case.
“So where has Debbie Roberson been for the last three days?” she asked.
“Holed up with an old boyfriend, Rafe Younger.”
Macy groaned. “Such an obvious explanation. If I had followed up with Rafe sooner, I’d have known that. Did Debbie blow off her job for him?”
“She said she notified her boss that her roommate agreed to swap shifts.”
“That’s not what Dr. Shaw said.”
“A simple miscommunication? Work schedules get mixed up all the time. Everything pointed to Debbie being in trouble.”
“But she wasn’t.”
“It was a false alarm.”
Macy sat back, staring out the window. “I have three days remaining to make headway in this case, and I’ve wasted precious time today running down a rabbit hole. Stupid.”
Nevada parked in front of the station and they both went inside. The deputy on duty buzzed them in, and they found their way to the conference room, where Bennett sat with an annoyed-looking young woman.
Dark hair framed the young woman’s face, drawing attention to smudged mascara and full, pouty lips. Looking freshly fucked and irritated, Debbie tapped her foot.
Beside her sat a lean man, sandy-brown hair, tanned skin. He was a good decade older, but unlike his partner, he didn’t appear concerned.
“Ms. Roberson and Mr. Younger, I’m Special Agent Macy Crow, and you must know Sheriff Mike Nevada.”
Both nodded, but it was Debbie who spoke. “I called my mother and she melted down over the phone. She said everyone thought I was dead.”
“We’re glad you are safe,” Macy said.
“I can’t believe you thought I was dead,” Debbie said.
Rafe leaned forward, hands clasped. “We didn’t mean to screw things up for you.”
Macy sat across from them but Nevada remained standing, leaning against the wall off to her right, his arms crossed. When he and Macy had worked together in Kansas City, he had let her do most of the talking while he played the role of the proverbial silent, brooding bad cop. By default, she was good cop, but if Debbie didn’t lose the attitude, he was fairly sure it was going to be a case of bad cop/bad cop.
“Where have you been?” Macy asked.
“We just took off,” Debbie said.
“You left your purse in your car at the park with the doors unlocked.”
“That was stupid, I know,” she said. “We got caught up in the moment, and I forgot about my stuff. I thought I’d locked my car, but I guess I forgot.”
“Where were you?” Nevada asked.
“An inn about twenty miles west of here. The Warm Springs Inn. I didn’t tell Mom because I didn’t think it would matter. I’m twenty-one, and we don’t always talk every day.”
“She’s also not crazy about Rafe,” Macy said.
Debbie shrugged her shoulders. “She’s uptight.”
Macy scribbled down the name of the inn. “Your cell phone was not transmitting a signal.”
“It got messed up at work,” Debbie said.
“What do you mean?” Macy asked.
“I don’t know. I pulled it out of my purse, and it wasn’t working. I didn’t have time to get it looked at.”
It was a perfect storm of incidents that had led to the wrong conclusion. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but knowing Macy as he did, this mistake would make her question her own judgment. “While I’ve got you here, Mr. Younger, let’s talk a little about Tobi Turner. Did you know her in high school?”
Rafe looked startled by the question and then quickly shook his head. “I was playing ball then. That was my focus, and I had about five friends that I remember.”
“Who’s Tobi?” Debbie asked Rafe.
“She was murdered, Ms. Roberson,” Macy said. “She went to school with your boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
“Mr. Younger?” Macy prompted.
“Sure, I knew her. We all knew each other. And when she vanished, everyone was a little freaked out.”
“Did you think I’d been killed like her?” Debbie asked.
“The thought did cross our minds, Ms. Roberson,” Macy said.
“Why? It was fifteen years ago.”
“The killer has not been caught, and frankly, you look a lot like Tobi. It was a coincidence I couldn’t ignore,” Macy said. “What about Cindy Shaw, Mr. Younger? You know her?”
“Sure.” Rafe folded his arms. “Do you think she was also murdered?”
The smart-ass tone clearly set Macy’s teeth on edge. “I don’t know, Mr. Younger. I sincerely hope not.”
“She wasn’t the kind to stick around here. She saw her ticket to freedom and she took it.”
“What was her freedom ticket?”
“She said she was coming into money. I guess it came, and she took off.”
“Where does a girl who lived in a trailer on the outside of town get enough money to quit school and move across the country?”
“She didn’t confide in me. We weren’t that close.”
“Who would she have confided in?” Macy asked.
“I don’t know. I really didn’t care about Cindy Shaw. No one got that upset when she left.”
“Keep talking,” Macy said.
“Cindy had a vested interest in Bruce making it to the big time. She thought once a scout picked him up, it was a matter of time before the NFL money rolled in. Cindy would have done anything to help her brother.”
“Such as?”
“I caught her going down on one of the scouts behind the field house.”
“Is that your idea of anything?” Macy asked.
“Whatever her brother wanted, she got for him.” Rafe was silent and then sighed. “I saw her arrive at the bonfire with Tobi Turner.”
For a moment the detail seemed to simmer with Macy. They both knew that Tobi had driven to school, changed clothes, and then ridden to the bonfire with Cindy. “That’s also not a crime.”
“Cindy gave her a glass of grain alcohol,” Rafe said. “Stuff tasted like lemonade, but it kicked like a mule.”
“What’s the point?” Macy asked.
“Tobi drank it straight down and Cindy served her another. I think the point was to loosen her up for one of the guys on the Dream Team.”
“Do you remember who ended up with Tobi?”